A Piece of my Mind

Last night (ok about 4am), I was thinking.

I tend to do that at night.
Think and think. Basically converse with myself about all kinds of crap and wonderment, for hours, until I'm so tired all my trains of thought end up derailing and crashing so I don't even know what I was even attempting to think about.

But anyway,
I was thinking about time. I was wondering if animals have any concept of time or if, for instance, when hedge-hogs see a clear road they think it'll just remain clear because they have no understanding of the future, so they'll just cross and SPLAT: Mr Hedgy is no more.
And then I wondered how, if indeed all the animals had no understanding of time, they might react if suddenly they did. If they were able to talk all of a sudden and became intelligent enough to actually comprehend what we understand time to be...how would they react..?
Because the idea of time is so crazily abstract and if you hadn't come across it before it would be mind blowing..wouldn't it?
And then I started thinking of things that would be equally as weird if you'd never met them. Like..senses and energy..and even matter.

This is where my brain started to ache a bit because whenever we imagine what might be OUT THERE, we always think of these vaguely human..or..lizard..or....egg like creatures which have health and feeling and language and are alive, in the sense that we know it, and live in three dimensional spaceships made of metal with little blinking lights...just how ridiculous is that?!
Because, out there (wherever *there* may be..beyond earth..the universe..this dimension..or something else altogether) there could be other things as abstract as time..or life..or..sound but they'd be things that we haven't come across! Things that aren't even close to anything we have ever known!
So I tried to imagine what they might be..but that was impossible because whenever humans imagine things, no matter how original or creative or innovative they think they're being, they can only ever imagine something that they have somehow vaguely experienced or come across in their lifetime and in this world/universe/dimension/...whatever, no?

At that point I started to have a slight panic attack and decided it would be best to just go to sleep before I got a brain hernia.

Sorry for the ramble. This probably makes no sense as I was just typing whatever popped into my head but I can't be bothered to proof-read..=D